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Generative AI has become an important factor influencing employees’ incomes in Russia, with the AI wage premium averaging 13%. The maximum benefit goes to those who already have high incomes and high skills, which may contribute to the expansion of the wage gap.
Macroeconomic forecasts often assume shock-induced unemployment is temporary and that employment and output recover. However, the reality may be far more complicated. The loss of skills and the mismatch that arises when workers switch industries may stall a recovery for years.
The science of economics is not mere knowledge of the world but a way of knowing it. This is why fictional worlds may be legitimate areas of research which are sometimes more convenient than the real world.
In Russia, around a third of the employed face a significant risk of being potentially affected by AI in their daily work. However, full automation, owing to the shift of all functions from humans to AI, threatens less than 1% of jobs.
Financial crises are associated with ‘black swans’, i.e. sudden market crashes. However, if a crisis is viewed as a peak-to-recovery period, the ‘swans’ become ‘turkeys’: routine and protracted events. They are almost unnoticeable but systemically chip away at investors’ wealth.
Unlike conventional finance, where profit is derived from interest on loans, Islamic finance works on a different logic: income only arises from real assets and shared risk. Over the past half-century, Islamic finance has grown into a global industry spanning 140 countries.
The price differential between new builds and resale properties in Russia is driven by factors beyond macroeconomic conditions. What also matters is the housing market structure including the level of competition among developers and banks, and subsidised mortgage programmes.
The digital economy is transforming the classic factors of production Adam Smith described in The Wealth of Nations – the treatise that laid the foundation of economics. Two and a half centuries later, Smith’s ideas remain relevant, but new realities demand that we rethink them.
Russia has seen a twofold rise in the average standard of living over the past 20 years. However, the share of food in household spending has shown paradoxical trends: in defiance of economic theory and global practice, it has changed little, if at all.
Consumer behaviour long remained on the periphery of both economic and sociological theory. The social sciences had to undergo several ‘turns’ before consumption was recognised as an independent economic and social force in its own right.
People often make unnecessary purchases or end up paying more than they can afford to, contrary to their economic benefit. Such consumption is called non-standard, and is observed, at least occasionally, in almost half of Russian adults.
The rational expectations hypothesis was the gold standard in macroeconomics for many years. It assumes that people take a realistic view of the future. In fact, people often attach too much importance to short-term trends, which may directly impact a central bank’s policy.
